by Julie Kenner
He nodded. “Have you ever heard of the Syndicate?”
“Of course,” she said. “A bunch of people were arrested last year. It was a mob thing, wasn’t it?”
“It was a lot more sophisticated than a mob thing,” he said. “But that’s the gist of it. The Syndicate controlled organized crime around the world.”
“What does that have to do with you?” she asked.
“I worked for them,” he said. “Here in London.”
She blinked, trying to process his words. She didn’t know what she expected. Maybe that he worked for MI6 or Interpol. Maybe even that he was a hired assassin of some kind.
That’s what she got for watching too many movies.
But this? The mob? Her Leo — her beautiful, gentle Leo — a member of the mafia?
That, she hadn’t expected.
“You were part of the mob?” She felt stupid repeating it, but she needed time to get her head around what he was saying.
He looked at her. “I still am, Diana.”
“But… they were put out of business. By the FBI in the States, wasn’t it? And Interpol?”
He shook his head. “It’s not that simple. You don't shut down that kind of business with the flip of a switch. It’s been around for hundreds of years. There were organizations all over the world, each one with a leader and several hundred soldiers. The criminal investigation took out the people at the very top — a few of them anyway. For everyone else it’s been more or less business as usual.”
The announcer pointed out Buckingham Palace in the distance, and the passengers swung their heads in the direction of the stately building that had been home of the British monarchy for over three hundred years. She gripped the railing, forcing the cold from the metal into her skin as a way to keep herself present. To keep from covering her ears and refusing to listen. When the tour guide was done speaking, she tried to find the words she needed to clarify Leo’s statement.
“So the London mob is still in business,” she said. “And you work for them.”
The wind blew across the water, ruffling Leo’s hair until the stray lock fell over his forehead. He pushed it back, then spoke slowly. “A more accurate statement would be that I help run it.”
She shook her head, fighting the urge to laugh hysterically. “You run the London mob?”
“No, but I work for the man who does.”
Memories of Leo flashed through her mind.
Leo rushing to meet her by the river in Prague, wearing a leather jacket, looking disheveled.
Leo getting a text over late night drinks in Tokyo and rushing to leave, despite the fact that she could tell he didn’t want to go.
Leo meeting her for coffee in New York, then expertly steering her away as a fight broke out in the crowd.
She suddenly felt stupid. She’d never gone to visit him at Global. Had never offered to meet him there for drinks after work. She’d been all too happy to let him come to her. To meet him in pubs and restaurants. To have him for the occasional dinner at her parent’s house during holidays and weekends when they both happened to be home.
Because you’re in love with him, a voice whispered in her head. Because you’ve always been in love with him. Because you knew if you got too close you would ruin everything by telling him.
“So you… what?” she asked. “Hurt people? Kill people?”
She saw the pain flash across his face in the moment before he composed his features into a mask of indifference. The expression was intimately familiar to her. It was the same one he’d worn when they were kids and someone made fun of his too-short pants. The same one he wore when he’d asked Abigail Dickenson to the dance and she’d laughed in his face. He’d learned early to buffer himself against the judgement of others. That he was doing it now with her made her feel like someone had cracked open her chest with a crowbar.
“Sometimes,” he said. “Yes.”
She shook her head. “But… why? You could have gone to university…”
He laughed. “So I could spend four more years with a bunch of prats who think they are better than me?”
“It’s different at university…” But the words sounded lame even to her own ears. Nothing was very different anywhere. That’s one thing she’d learned being out in the world.
He leveled his eyes at her, a silent challenge.
She sighed. “All right, they aren’t always different. But you could have done anything, Leo. Why this?”
He shrugged, and she knew from the defiant set of his shoulders that he was shutting down. She wouldn’t get anything more of out him. Not now. Not about this. And they had bigger problems. More immediate problems.
“So what now?” she asked.
He ran a hand through his hair and surveyed the swiftly approaching dock. The tour was all but over, London’s famous tourist attractions summarized and photographed by everyone on board.
“We have to get out of the city,” he said.
“We could go home,” she suggested. “Back to Cornwall.”
He shook his head. “That would only put your parents in danger.”
She fought panic. “Do you think those men will go after my parents?”
She was glad he seemed to consider the question, that he didn’t answer quickly simply to ease her mind. It meant he was telling the truth. “Not if you don’t contact them. Something bigger is going on. My guess is they want out of the city as badly as we do.”
She crossed her arms over her body. “Not badly enough to leave me alone.”
“They were just covering their bases at my place,” he said. “Going through a list of close friends — probably from the phone you left in your office — to see if they could find you. I don’t think they’re going to turn the city upside down to do it. Which doesn’t mean we should take the chance.”
“I’m not coming up with an answer here,” she said as the boat bumped gently against the dock. They stayed at the back of the crowd as the other passengers started disembarking. She watched Leo’s face as he scanned the crowd on the pier.
“I am.” He took her hand. “Stay close.”
Chapter Eleven
Leo looked around the plush apartment, wondering what Diana was thinking. The place was nice. Too nice for Hyrum Seaver, the twenty-two-year-old uni drop out who owned it. Leo wasn’t surprised. The market for authentic looking forgeries was always hot, and never more so than in the twenty-first century when it was nearly impossible to get past chip readers and databases and all the technology that made being off the grid virtually impossible.
But Hyrum knew his shit. Passports, driver’s licenses, birth certificates. Hyrum Seaver could reproduce them all.
And from the looks of the high end flat overlooking the river, business was booming.
Leo had thought about going to the club, asking Farrell for help. But Farrell and Jenna had only been back from Paris for a few weeks. They’d been through hell over the past couple of months. They deserved time with their daughter, and Leo knew Farrell was busy getting things under control with the business.
This was his problem. He would take care of it himself.
Still, he’d felt bad calling Farrell, asking for time off, being cagey about his reasons. But it was better than involving his boss — his friend — in yet another mess.
“You’ll have to pay extra for the rush.”
Leo turned his attention on the guy sitting at the computer in front of him. “It’s fine.”
Leo didn’t love bringing Diana here. In fact, he didn’t love anything about this, not the least of which was having to take her with him as he tried to find the men who were hunting her.
But he didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t leave her in London, even with a friend. Despite what he’d told her, he wasn’t at all sure Antonis Stavros wouldn’t come after her. Leo had no doubt the man’s informants had been deputized at the police station, but a man like that had connections everywhere. He might flee the country, but that didn
’t mean he wouldn’t leave people behind to find Diana.
Which meant she had to come with him, arguably just as dangerous given that he’d finally figured out why the name she remembered the men saying felt so familiar.
“I need a picture,” Hyrum said, looking nervously at Diana. Behind his computer monitor, he was perfectly at ease, a king surveying his kingdom. But his nervousness around Diana made him look like the geeky college kid he should have been.
“Diana,” Leo said, directing her to the chair on the other side of Hyrum’s desk.
She sat down, and Hyrum tapped a few buttons on his keyboard. “I’ll need a couple hours. You guys are welcome to hang in the living room while you wait.”
“That’s okay,” Leo said. “I have a few things to do. We’ll be back in two hours.”
He led Diana out of the flat and onto London’s darkened streets. Night had fallen while they’d been inside Hyrum’s flat. Leo relaxed a little. He was comfortable in the shadows. Had been living there all his life.
“Where are we going?” Diana asked.
“We’re going to need a few things. Come on.”
They stopped at a discount store and picked up a change of clothes, toiletries, and two backpacks. They would be suspicious going through customs with no baggage, and Leo was careful to choose things that would help them pass as a young couple on a budget holiday. The thought caused him a pang of regret. He would much rather be traveling with Diana on holiday, preparing to lay next to her on a sandy beach, than fleeing to a part of the world that was as dangerous as it was mysterious.
He wasn’t surprised that Diana didn’t ask many questions. It was one of the things he’d always loved about her. She seemed to know when he needed time. Seemed perfectly willing to give him all the space he needed before he was ready to talk. And he was under no illusion; she was likely still figuring things out for herself. Figuring out how she felt about the fact that everything she believed about him had been a lie.
Not everything, he corrected himself. Not the way he felt about her. The way he’d always felt about her.
They left the store with an hour to spare and found a dimly lit pub with a nondescript sign and a blue collar clientele. They were both ravenous, and they passed the time plowing through plates of crispy fried fish washed down with cheap beer. When they were done, they headed back to Hyrum’s flat. Leo approached cautiously, wanting to make sure they hadn’t been made. It wasn’t Hyrum. Leo trusted him as much as he trusted anybody in the business.
But the business bred paranoia. You never knew when someone might trade you for something more valuable. He assumed his connection to Farrell’s operation gave him some form of protection, but he wasn’t about to risk Diana’s life on the bet.
Leo transferred the bags to his left hand so he’d be able to grab his weapon if the situation called for it, but the street outside looked clean, and a few minutes later they were being ushered back into Hyrum’s flat.
“Almost done,” he said.
His eyes were glassy, and he turned away from them and sat down in front of the computer. Several documents emerged from the printer, and Hyrum spent twenty more minutes carefully applying stamps to the documents, including two that looked like three dimensional holograms. Leo didn’t know much about forgeries, but he knew one thing; it was impossible to replicate the holographic stamps that had become standard on identifying documents. The stamps used by Hyrum were the real deal. Farrell didn’t even want to know how he’d come into possession of them.
“All set.” Hyrum stood and handed the documents to Leo. “The stamps are solid, and the printing technology is about ninety-eight percent there.”
Leo raised an eyebrow. “Ninety-eight percent?”
Hyrum shrugged. “It changes fast, mate. We do our best to keep up.” He looked over at Diana. “She’s not going to have any problem.”
Leo knew what Hyrum meant. Diana looked like what she was — an affluent, educated woman. It wasn’t just the expensive clothes Leo had chosen for her or her classic bone structure. It was something about the way she carried herself. About the regal lift of her chin and the way she moved so easily through the world, even now. Like she didn’t have a care in the world. As if she could part a crowd like the Red Sea simply by moving through it.
Leo wouldn’t have been surprised if she could.
He took the documents from Hyrum and gave them a cursory glance. The name was fake, but the picture was Diana, and everything looked legitimate.
“Thanks.” He handed Hyrum a wad of cash, thankful all over again that he’d learned from Farrell’s example and stashed a sizable chunk of cash and an alternate set of identification for himself in a safe deposit box in the city. He had gone to the bank after the boat ride on the Thames and withdrawn it all.
Hyrum gripped his hand in the kind of bro handshake Leo despised. “No problem.”
“Remember,” Leo said. “We were never here.”
Hyrum nodded as he walked them to the door. “I know the drill.”
Leo and Diana stepped out into the hall. They were almost to the elevator when Hyrum spoke behind them.
“Yo, Leo.”
He turned around. “Yeah?”
“Watch your back, mate.” He glanced at Diana. “And hers, too.”
"You can count on it.”
They stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for the ground floor. When they got there, they exited the building, and Leo flagged a cab.
“Heathrow,” he told the driver, settling back into the seat.
“Where are we going?” Diana asked.
“Spain.” He hesitated, wondering how much he should tell her, then deciding there had been enough secrets between them. “And then Algeria.”
Chapter Twelve
Diana looked out the window of the taxi, trying to adjust to the scenery on the other side of the glass. They’d left London in the dead of night, transferred planes in Tangier, then landed in Almeria, Spain as the sun was just beginning to lighten the sky. She’d slept most of the way, her exhaustion finally overcoming the questions and fears that had been swirling in her head since the night before. She’d woken up to find her head on Leo’s shoulder, the crisp cotton of his T-shirt soft under her cheek, his solid strength propping her up, just like always.
She still wasn’t sure what Leo planned to do or why they were in Spain, let alone Algeria, which he’d mentioned in passing as they left London. She had questions, and she wasn’t some kind of shrinking violet who wouldn’t ask them.
But she liked to have her thoughts in order when she looked for answers. It was difficult to get them in the best of situations. Starting with the right questions narrowed the odds significantly. Besides, the drawbridge was still shut tight over Leo’s face. He wasn’t ready to talk yet. She could wait. She’d been waiting for years.
They wound their way through the seaside town of Almeria as exotic music sounded from the radio in the taxi. She knew they were in Spain, but the proximity to Algeria across the Mediterranean Sea lent a Middle Eastern flavor to the town. The city was a fortress unto itself, built on sloping hills with a castle-like structure perched on a hill at its center. It would have been a difficult one to conquer with the hills at its back and the sea at its front, and she could almost imagine it being attacked by Berber pirates in the 16th century. Now the buildings were pristine and whitewashed, and a series of hotels lined the waterfront where yachts and cruise ships dotted the sapphire water.
They continued toward the water, then passed a string of lush properties, all of them backing up to the white sand beaches of Almeria. They continued past them, gradually leaving behind the more densely packed parts of the city. The land became drier and more scrubby, long stretches of rocky hills punctuated with desert-like shrubs. The sea was a jewel, glittering and stretching into the distance like a blanket of diamonds under the sun.
Finally, the car slowed around a curve, emerging onto a long paved road leading to a large h
ouse balanced on the edge of a hill. The taxi came to a stop. Leo helped her out and grabbed the backpacks they’d bought before leaving London. Then they were alone in front of the whitewashed building, watching the taxi disappear around the curve, the waves rolling onto the beach below.
“Come on,” Leo said. “You must be tired.”
Tired didn’t exactly describe the low-level lethargy that had settled into her bones since they boarded the plane in London, but it was close enough. She took in the white stucco structure as she followed him up a pathway to the house. From this side, it looked like a simple home with minimal windows, but when they stepped into the double height foyer, she saw that it had been an illusion.
The house was large and airy, with a wall of glass on the other side that provided an expansive view of the sea. She knew that Morocco and Algiers lay on the other side of it, but there was no sign of land from their perch on the cliff. The water seemed to go on forever. Leo reached for the glass, withdrawing a door she hadn’t seen and pulling it back until it disappeared into a pocket in the wall. The sound of the ocean immediately invaded the house, a rhythm of white noise that enveloped her in an immediate calm.
She walked to the window and stepped onto a large balcony, gazed out over the endless blue water. Even the smell of it — dry and salty — made her feel better. She had the sudden sense of being completely alone in the world — no one but Leo, nothing but this place and the glittering sea and the hot sun overhead.
“It’s gorgeous,” she said. “Is it yours?”
She didn’t look at him as she asked the question. He was both her Leo and not her Leo. Someone she knew better than she knew herself, and a complete and utter stranger. Did he have the kind of money that could buy such a place? Was he the kind of person that would buy such a place?
It was only the first of many questions she would have to ask.
“No.” He hesitated. “I do own a couple of properties. Nothing this grand. Just little places to escape to when the need arises.”